Faculty

"I'm trying to get students to analyze the music all the time. For instance, if you're a vocalist you probably will not focus on where the snare drum is placed. But if you know what's going on behind you, you can sing better, and you don't have to hire an arranger. I think you can learn the most by analyzing what you like. Why do I like it? Let's try to imitate at first and then make it our own."

"Many of the technical tools and methods used today in the recording studio are quickly going to become obsolete, and it's important for the contemporary music production and engineering student to have an education that's going to allow them to not only change with the new technologies, but help invent them as well. I think it offers a student the opportunity to create careers in all segments of the audio industry."

"As a singer, I can share a different perspective with students. Singers and drummers usually do things by ear. Drummers are dealing with rhythm, and a lot of times they say, 'Why do I need to know this stuff? I'm just a drummer.' But if you talk to famous drummers who write and lead bands and compose, it's a lot more."

"Teaching in the Music Education Department, you have to prepare people to do it all. Most state certificates for music educators are not area- and grade-specific like those for English or science. As a public school music teacher in Massachusetts, your certification will be K–12, all ages, all levels. So Berklee students who plan to enter public education need experiences that will help them become proficient in teaching brass, voice, strings, and woodwinds. Plus, if the school where they are teaching has a football team, nine times out of ten they will be responsible for the marching band. So they have to have all of these experiences."

"Growing up in Argentina after the dictatorship, there were not many resources in schools. I had some really good teachers, but music education was very sloppy. That turned out to be a positive, since I had to teach myself a lot of things I'd missed, espectially when I started teaching myself the vibraphone. That process has given me the sensitivity to see my students' missing links. I'm very sensitive to those things because they were in me at one point or another."

"A hit song is actually somewhat formulaic--the repetitiveness, the rousing section that leads us to that ever-so-hooky thing that we call a chorus--those things seem to happen over and over in hit songs, whether we like to admit it or not. It's not necessarily a good song from a musical standpoint, one that uses The Chord That Stops The Planet From Rotating On Its Axis; it's not that at all. I think one of the most difficult things to give students a grasp of is an idea of the dire simplicity of most of the music in a song.

"I want to create, in my classroom, an environment that closely mirrors my experience in the real world. I'm a former recording artist, a producer, an engineer. . . . I've managed, I've done tour support, I've done live sounds. . . . So I want to teach my students how to survive in the music business and put them in as many realistic situations as possible. If you're going to take advantage of this educational process, you need to investigate as many of those tangents as possible. You never know when one of them might be the one that opens the door."

"We are a cutting-edge department with a frontier kind of presence in the industry. All of the faculty are well informed on current developments. We bring that into the classroom and mix that with the content you need to know if you want to work in the business. You need to know about legal aspects, business start-ups, and have a very keen eye on where technology change is taking the business."

"I had the opportunity to audition for a performance job at Old Sturbridge Village, which is a living history museum in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. I worked there both in a solo capacity and performing in small ensemble groups. I did recordings of early American folk music, specifically ladies' parlor ballads. The more I worked in that genre, the more interested I became in how women work in music and how folk music is such a powerful influence in so many women's lives. It was a way for women to express themselves, and it became a way for me to express myself, as well, and to sing, which is important to me."